If you had an image with a registered copyright put up like that on Flickr I would think you could sue Yahoo for something.  Maybe some lawyer would take it on contingency.

fred

No. There is no way any lawyer is taking such a case on contingency.

If you do find one, send them my way, I can make him/her rich because I have found many places that sell my stuff and my contingency lawyer tried but never achieved anything. The infringing party knows that nothing is going to happen unless this is going into litigation which is costly. I did register copyright btw.

Contingency lawyers want to settle out of court and don't offer a lot of help (that's my experience, yours may differ).

If you have some bad a$$ lawyer that you have to pay for, it may be possible to get some money back when the case goes to court but otherwise there is barely any monetary damage done (that a judge could award) if you find your stuff on Flickr.

I also thought that the "I swear" part is mandatory.

Often the web sites have a list of required information that has to be provided in the DMCA claim.

Using DMCA templates should be fine but read their requirements thoroughly.

Sometimes they switch the order of personal information and other parts of information that you need to provide.

Fotolia for instance is very strict about that.

I still think it should be fair.

DT has its technical requirements that need to be met (not including the similar "excuse" - simply checking exposure, focus, composition, commercial value) on an image by image basis.

If Yuri can get similars through the review, all other contributors should as well. While he gets his stuff (most likely 100%) accepted, other contributors still get the similar "excuse".

Like I said, as long as the images are technically worth being accepted then don't make a difference between Yuri and others.

Whether your company or not - it WILL leave a sour taste in many contributors' mouths and this may come back to you some day...

Tyler, good job!

Although it's common sense what Carmen is saying it's very good to hear this straight from a DT employee.

Very valuable info, especially the one she wasn't sure if she can say it 

Quote from: click_click on August 31, 2010, 07:49

There are tons of blogs and resources online that explicitly recommend new photographers to post their best shots in the IS forum first to get a valuable opinion about their commercial value and if they are suitable for application.

Except you can't post unless you buy credits or are already approved.

Got that wrong. He can read the IS forum (without being logged in) to gather some ground rules and important details posted by other applicants. Oftentimes it's enough just to see what others have done wrong to learn from their mistakes.

Of course he has to post the images somewhere else - and there are plenty of opportunities for that...

...Take this example.

image sale $100

40% to photographers, $40
50% finding new customers, $50
5% running the site, $5
4% book keeping etc. $4
1% profits.

Now they give 89% of their profits to charity, .. that's 89 cents.  They give 11% of their profits to their owners as a dividend in the company, 11 cents.

I think this would be more in the ballpark. While it may not be just %1 of profits I do believe it may well be under 5% though.

And hey, how many agencies do donate to charities on a scale like that though? Still a nice move. I hope the money is spent wisely on the "right" projects.

It's hard to follow the thread in its entirety but I want to bring up a couple of thoughts here.

- Why would the big 4 (together) support ONE site, that supposedly drives traffic to them. Either one of the big 4 would like to do that individually but not if IS knows that the site also promotes SS, DT and FT images. At least it would bother me as an agency owner to see that other agencies would be supported by the same source. Maybe I'm just naive about that.

- I blog about various issues in Microstock using only my own images as blog illustrations. All linked to my images at each agency with referral code. I have 30 unique visitors daily and not once found out that one of them bought one of them. I don't know how much traffic Brandon, has and I believe he as a lot more so, sure there can be money/business made but the traffic has to be there in the first place to get there.

- Content is key. While many sales people say that you can sell anything (no matter how bad it is) it just matters HOW you sell it. HOW do you promote it. Same thing with the iPhone. While competitors have better phones available (screen res, camera res, add-on memory, customization options etc.), Apple (also due to it's phenomenal brand image) manages to get that thing sold as if there are no other phones on the market. I strongly believe in quality and not quantity. So to me it only makes sense to offer exclusive content.  How can you offer something successfully at a higher price point if it's available somewhere else dirt cheap.

- Letting in 2 images from Bronze members I read somewhere... What would be the motivation for these people to keep contributing? That barely leaves any exposure for them. Sure, it mostly makes only sense for contributors with large, already successful portfolios. Or at least newbies with exceptionally creative content. You need to offer a considerable amount of high quality content to begin with and keep the new content coming at the same time.

Now besides that:

I've been working my butt off to figure out this Twitter thing, enhancing my Zazzle store and promoting my portfolio through my web site.

Traffic and targeted visitors are my goal which I can't get to see my stuff.

There are hundreds of books, workshops and courses out there (especially youtube - LOL) that promise you trillions of $$$ if you follow their strategy. I think this is even worse to find the right info than asking what to shoot in a microstock forum in order to be successful.

Obviously all of us (with maybe a few exceptions) have no clue how to successfully promote ourselves. Otherwise we would be laying on our yacht right now watching the royalties roll in on a custom-designed flat screen, mounted over my hammock.

So my question is: Can one person (photographer/contributor) do it ALL by him/herself?

- Creating content (editing, keywording, uploading and managing)
- create their own web presence like a personal/professional web site as an electronic business card to build their brand
- create, manage and add to a blog on a regular basis
- follow, un-follow, find new people to follow on Twitter and tweet about useful stuff
- create, maintain and update Facebook and mySpace
- educate yourself in terms of new photography gear, social networks trends, web site technology, marketing strategies
- advertise, promote and market yourself in person at the ball's game, supermarket, intersection etc.
- walk into galleries, restaurants small businesses and present yourself as the next big Sh!t who has the bestest images in the world that they have to buy.

I mean the list goes on and on.

Oh and do you guys also have a life? I barely do. Does that mean I'm incredibly inefficient, because technology is supposed to make everything easier?

I'm pretty sure the ones who figured all this out successfully don't hang around in any forum nor do they want to share this info but maybe we can put some pieces together.

Oh and another thing about this idea of promoting our images: How much money is each of you willing to throw into the pot to make it happen. Or how many hours a day are you willing to work for free to set it up, as you may also be a web designer, programmer etc.?

I don't want to spam. I'm trying to make people aware of new products like Zazzle let's say.

Sure it looks like spam but it is my Twitter account so what else am I supposed to do.

Like Sean I have the same experience. I keep tweeting and people keep following.

I don't use auto tweeters - I can see that this is annoying and puts people off.

Have to look into the list thing though.

Thanks for all your posts! Keep it coming if possible!

Middle Tier, yeah right  

For me:

Crestock
Pond5
Clipdealer
Scanstockphoto

are each doing a lot better than either one of Veer or Depositphotos. What a joke to be in the "middle tier".

Bear also in mind that these 4 agencies are the only ones from the "low earners" that I signed up with.

Chuck the word "designs" or "photography" at the end of your username, keep tweeting and people will follow.  Then follow them and you'll appear on more lists as you tweet.  I have never followed anyone that hasn't followed me first and on one of my accounts I've accumulated over 3000 followers over two years.    

You need to have something in common with others to appear on their "who to follow" list or the "more like so and so" list.  

Will do. Makes sense and I hope I'll also get lots of followers that I can spam my stuff to  

Ok thanks for that info. Keep it coming.

Except also the same guy goes on the explain how the NU are used  internally in large corporations for presentations etc. The whole analogy is nonsense.
And as a side note you should really get the photogs permission to repost text. It is after all copyrighted.

I removed the quote. I won't quote anymore at all and just re-write the jist of their post to avoid problems in the future.